Search Results: data

Nathan has been able to refine Ava's software thanks to his unmitigated access to internet users' search data, as well as to their telecommunications. Caleb, too, wonders if his attraction to Ava is due to her design being based on a review of his internet pornography profile. It is no coincidence that Ava replicates an idealised version of the female form. Nathan's and even Caleb's relationship to her is fundamentally exploitative and voyeuristic.

The CEO of my company is on $10.7 million a year. He did a floor walk today. He glanced at me for less than half a second. I worked out that he's on $41,152 a day. Then worked out his glance at me was worth about $7.80. I feel ripped off. That was a crap glance.

Australian references to 'boat people' is simplistic and offensive. 'Queue jumper' inaccurate and moralising. Even the term 'asylum seeker' has become politically complicit. European coverage of this week's Mediterranean boat tragedy describes the victims and survivors simply as 'migrants', which is an open description of a person on a boat crossing borders.

The WA premier plans to increase mandatory prison sentences for burglars. Mandatory sentencing regimes fail to take into account the underlying causes of the crimes they seek to punish. They remove a judge’s discretion to avoid a sentence of imprisonment, and fail to address the reality that such crimes reflect social problems that ensue from racial discrimination and colonial dispossession.

Mandatory data retention was a bad idea when it was originally floated during a Gillard Government inquiry. It is a worse idea now, and is set to become law for political reasons, not because it has been properly scrutinised. There are important questions that we should be asking, and we should not let ourselves be put off from doing this if we don’t know the difference between data and metadata (there is none).

There are currently two national inquiries into the experiences of children in out-of-home care. Yet neither is specifically exploring what happens to young people transitioning from care. This is like a football team putting in a good performance in the first half but neglecting the second, which decides the outcome.

As the freshly minted Social Services Minister, Scott Morrison has moved quickly to soften the tough stance he took in the Immigration portfolio. But it won't necessarily be easy. Patrick McClure has presented him with a massively controversial report on welfare reform which, if acted upon, would significantly reduce the incomes of a million marginalised Australians.

Snowden is both passionate and highly articulate, wanting nothing less noble than to see the delineation between those with power and the people over whom they wield it redrawn. The real meat of the matter is not the revelations themselves, but how in their light governments and societies desiring security will move to decide just how much freedom they are willing to surrender in order to acquire it.

It's December, and film writers everywhere are putting together their lists of the best films of 2014. But best-of lists are so subjective, so here's our take: ten films from 2014 that are guaranteed to get you thinking, and talking!

The media has reported that Swedish furniture company IKEA's Australian arm has earned an estimated $1 billion in profits since 2003, almost all of which has been exported tax-free. Action to crack down on tax avoidance is on the agenda of next week's G20 in Brisbane, but it remains to be seen if the interests of developing countries will be looked after.

I take a lot of selfies. Some of them are silly, coquettish, dramatic. Others are just my face looking into my computer, sitting where I work, dressed in work clothes. They mean more or less nothing. They’re just an inane collection of data on my laptop, or too easy self-portraits. Nothing means nothing, but it says something about the culture.

At 6:30 am I pull on my compression tights, lace up my black and bubble gum blue boots, throw on a crumpled, old t-shirt, and join the early risers to play basketball at my local sports and aquatic centre. This twice weekly ritual has helped me realise that sport heals when I play it on my own terms.